11 Sep Graham St John
Graham St John
LECTURE
Strange Attractor: The Accidental Occultism of Terence McKenna
Terence McKenna was the 20th century’s psychedelic renaissance man. He is today an enigma, at once a persona non grata in the world of psychedelic science and phenomenal occult figure in the psychedelic underground. This talk will address this paradox and introduce content from my recently published Strange Attractor: The Hallucinatory Life of Terence McKenna, a comprehensive biography of this stand-up philosopher, rogue scholar, and surreal oracle. Perfecting his rugged philosophy on the role of psychedelics in evolution, consciousness, and time, McKenna was a riotous provocateur who charted the edges of mind and matter with razor wit and poetic charm. Documenting one of the most celebrated yet least understood figures of the twentieth century, Strange Attractor chronicles the life, work, and legacy of a bold cartographer of the weird, whose voice affected multitudes and continues to haunt the present.
Bio
Graham St John, PhD, is a cultural historian and vibeologist specialising in the anthropology of transformational events, movements, and figures. Strange Attractor: The Hallucinatory Life of Terence McKenna (MIT Press, 2025) is the latest among his ten books, which also include Mystery School in Hyperspace: A Cultural History of DMT, Global Tribe: Technology, Spirituality and Psytrance, and FreeNRG: Notes from the Edge of the Dancefloor. Graham is Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Media, Humanities and the Arts at the University of Huddersfield, UK. He is Executive Editor of Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture and a curator of the speaker’s program at Chambok House, Ozora Festival, Hungary.
